Sixth Grave on the Edge

17

Oh, my. What a lovely shade of bitch you’re wearing today.

—T-SHIRT

We waited in front of the apartment for Phillip to show. He was over fifteen minutes late, and I was beginning to worry we’d been stood up when he pulled around to the side of the building. The two of us got out and walked over to meet him. But when he spotted Garrett, he started to rethink.

He was about to get back in his car when I got to him. “This is a colleague,” I said to him, holding up my hands in surrender. “He’s also a PI and the best tracker I’ve ever met. You can tell him anything you’d tell me.”

I felt a wave of appreciation drift off Garrett. It was so much nicer than the annoyance or frustration I normally felt come off him.

“This was a mistake,” Phillip said, edging back into his car.

“I’m sorry to do this, Phillip, but I will tell those men anything they want to hear if you don’t let me in on this.” I decided to hit him with my big question and gauge his reaction. “Did you kill that man?”

He raised his chin. “Yes, I did.”

I gasped and glared at him. “You’re lying. You never murdered anyone.”

He jammed an index finger over his mouth to shush me. “Do you want the whole neighborhood to hear you? You’re going to get us all killed.”

What the hell was going on?

He took hold of my arm and led me to a lower-level apartment.

After pouring himself a stiff one, he offered a glass to Garrett. Thankfully, Swopes shook his head. This was no time to be getting rowdy with the boys.

When he sat down, I said, “Okay, Brinkman, spill. Why is your girlfriend saying she saw you kill someone?”

He released a hapless sigh, then said, “Because I needed a way out. Things were getting too unstable. Too unpredictable.”

“Does this have anything to do with the fact that you run way more money through your business than cars?”

His head snapped up. “How did you know that?”

“Told you, connections. What gives?” I asked, kicking a dirty sock away from me.

He collapsed onto the sofa and leaned his head back. The guy was about five minutes away from a nervous breakdown. I kind of felt sorry for him.

“I launder money for the Mendoza family.”

Garrett stilled. Clearly that name meant something to him.

“The Mendoza family?” I asked, completely out of the loop.

But before Phillip could answer, Garrett said, “The Mendozas are one of the biggest crime families from Mexico. They have been responsible for hundreds of deaths there, including cops and judges.”

I glanced back at Phillip. “How did you get involved with them?”

“They came to me, offered to help me get the business back on its feet, promised to make me a rich man. They did both of those things, but the Mendozas aren’t the most stable people I’ve ever met.”

“I still don’t understand what a murder has to do with anything.”

“It was Emily’s idea. I’m hoping that once I go to prison, they’ll forget about me.”

“So that’s the plan? Go to prison for a crime you didn’t commit? If you aren’t scared to go to prison, why not just turn yourself in?”

“Do you know what they would do to me if I did that? To my children? I moved my ex-wife and kids across the country to get them away from these guys, but their reach doesn’t exactly end at the state line. They wouldn’t hesitate to hurt them to keep me doing what I do. Or worse, kill them. This way, I go to prison for something completely unrelated. I lose everything, including this business. They have no more use for me, and my kids will be safe.”

“So, there was never a murder? Your girlfriend never saw anything?”

“No.”

“Then who are they looking for? Who did you supposedly kill?”

“My best friend from college. He agreed to disappear for a price.”

“Dude, he will show back up eventually.”

“No, he has no family here. No deep friendships, besides with me.”

“That’s terribly risky.”

“Believe me, I understand that more than you can possibly know. And I have a contingency plan.”

“Which is?”

“I have a man on standby who will take my ex and children into hiding. I’ve put back millions for that purpose.”

“Who all knows this?”

“No one. No one but Jeff, the guy I supposedly murdered, and my girlfriend. And now you. Damn it.” He chewed his lower lip in thought. “I knew this probably wouldn’t work. I just can’t risk Emily’s well-being. She’s so smart. And she’s brave. She knew they’d go after her.” The thought of her brought a smile to his face. “I’ve never met anyone so willing to risk everything, including her life, for me.”

“So, whose apartment is this?” I asked him.

“Jeff’s.”

“The guy you supposedly killed?”

“The one and only.”

“This is kind of creepy.”

“Really?” Garrett asked, his expression deadpan. “This is creepy?”

“Let me look into this, Phillip, see what I can find out and what can be done.”

“Nothing,” he said. “The game’s over. If they knew I was trying to lose the business on purpose, they’d go after everyone I’ve ever loved.”

“We’re not going to let that happen.”

“Look, if they sent men to your apartment, I promise on my life, they’re bugging you.”

“They definitely bugged. That whole gun-to-the-head thing was very annoying.”

“No, bugs. Surveillance. Watch everything you say. If you repeat this—”

“No, I gotcha.” The captain had been bugging me, too. Literally and metaphorically. “I need to clean house anyway.”

I called my friend Pari on the way home. “I need you to do my apt.”

“I’m just not that attracted to your apt.”

“I think I’m being bugged.”

“Like I am? Right now?”

“Kind of, only less metaphorically. Do you still have that equipment to detect stuff like that?”

After a very long pause, she said, “No. You know I’m not allowed near anything like that. I am adhering to the conditions of my probation, thank you very much.”

“Okay, but really,” I said.

“Oh, are you asking me if I have that can of bug spray you loaned me?”

I could visualize her winking at me in a blatant attempt at subterfuge. But seriously, who loaned out a can of bug spray and expected it to be returned?

“Um, yes,” I said, playing along. “Do you still have that can of bug spray I loaned you?”

“It will take me a while to comb through my back room, where I have nothing even remotely related to computers and/or electronics-related paraphernalia.”

“You can’t even have electronics-related paraphernalia? What the hell did you do?”

“Not what,” she said, dropping the guise. “But who.”

“Okay, then who did you do?”

“I kind of accidentally on purpose hacked the White House’s phone system.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think that was wise?”

“Not anymore, you can bet your ass on that. They take that stuff really seriously.”

“I wonder why.”

I hung up, then gave my driver—whom I’d temporarily renamed Fitz because Garrett didn’t sound like a driver’s name at all—my full attention. “Have you found out anything else on the Twelve, Fitz?”

“A little,” he said, rolling with it. “I told Dr. von Holstein to focus on them, see what the prophecies say.”

“And?”

“He’s still working on it, but one thing he’s found that’s very interesting is that there are mentions of two sets of Twelve with one defining force in the middle, the thirteenth beast.”

“Really?” I asked, suddenly very interested.

“The way I understand it, there are the Twelve, aka the darkness, but there are also twelve sentient beings of light to balance the scales, sent to protect you, the daughter.”

“That seems like a lot of trouble to go to. And the thirteenth?”

“He is the single being that will tip the scales either to the light or the dark.”

No kidding.

By the time I got back to my building, Pari was there waiting on me. She lived only a block away, which made it nice, especially when I needed her help with something. Or when I needed a back rub. She had incredible hands.

I’d tried to call Uncle Bob, but he didn’t pick up. I needed to know how it went with the captain. And if he really hired that fake psychic. She totally bleached her hair. I also called Quentin on video chat. He was doing fine as well and asked about Amber.

“Just don’t go around her mother anytime soon. You’ll be skinned alive.”

He winced, and signed, “I understand. I’m really sorry.”

“I know you are, sweet boy, and if Cookie gets ahold of you, you’ll be even sorrier.”

“Okay.”

I blew him a kiss and hung up.

Pari had put on her sunglasses, as she did whenever she was around me. She could see my light, said it blinded her. She spotted Garrett as we got out, and her eyes danced a bit before asking, “So, what are we doing?”

“I’m being bugged by everyone from APD to the Mendoza crime family.”

“You do like to piss people off.”

“I didn’t do anything to either one of them. The Man’s got it in for me.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” she said, offering yours truly a tender-ish pat on the back. Either that or she was trying to dislodge my larynx.

I coughed and introduced them. “Pari, this is Fitz. He’s my new driver. I’ve decided I need a driver at my beck and call, and he’s really cheap.”

“I’m Garrett,” he said when he took her hand.

She surveyed him from head to toe.

“Fitz, this is Pari. She’s a killer tattoo artist and has only been to prison twice.”

“I’ve never been to prison,” she corrected, unable to take her eyes off him. “You have an incredible aura.”

That was it. I’d seen enough to feel slighted for her main squeeze. “What about Tre?” I asked her, appalled. She’d been dating her employee for a while now. The whole thing screamed sexual harassment lawsuit, but they’d seemed happy.

“His aura is fine. Garrett’s here, however, is quite unique.”

“Really?” I asked, squinting my eyes. I could see auras. Kind of.

“Quite unique.”

“My bugs?” I asked her.

“Oh, right.” She unloaded her bag and brought out a handheld device that I assumed swept for bugs. Then again, she could be a total charlatan. How would I know?

“I am thinking about adding surveillance of some kind. Like motion detectors and cameras. I’m tired of people breaking in without so much as a by-your-leave.”

“Normally, I’d say a camera was a bit much, but in your case, I’d recommend two and possibly some type of explosive booby trap.”

She turned on the device and started waving it over and under the most obvious places to hide a bug. She found one almost immediately and reached under my windowsill. It looked like a small black button.

“Very state of the art,” she said. She handed it to Garrett, who agreed with a nod.

“I doubt this came from your captain,” he said. “The government would never spring for such high-dollar equipment.”

“The Mendozas?” I whispered, not wanting them to hear me.

He held it up to the light and turned it in his fingers, admiring it. “Most likely.”

“Okay,” I said to Pari, “put it back exactly as you found it and make sure it still works. I’m going to need it later.”

She gave me a thumbs-up, then whispered, “It’s extremely sophisticated. It has a range of—” She stopped and let her gaze slide past me.

“Of?” I asked, before realizing she’d spotted my roomie.

“What is that?” she asked, straightening.

“That is a Mr. Wong. He’s my apartment mate.”

Pari had been able to see the departed since a near-death accident when she was twelve, but she could see only a slight disturbance in her vision, a light grayish mist.

“He’s a departed?” she asked.

“Yeah. He just kind of hangs in my corner. All day. Every day. He doesn’t get out much.” When she didn’t reply, I glanced back at her. She’d removed her sunglasses and stood transfixed. “What?” I asked. “You see the departed all the time.”

“You sure that’s what he is?” she asked.

That got my attention. “What do you mean?” I stepped closer to Mr. Wong. “He looks like every other departed I’ve ever seen. Maybe a tad more monochrome.” He was awfully gray.

“No, he’s not like every other departed,” she said.

Garrett watched our exchange, more interested in the receiver he was holding than in anything supernatural. He liked things he could see. Things he could touch and explain. For a guy who hailed from a family of practicing voodooists, not to mention went to hell and back, he was not very comfortable discussing the supernatural realm.

I squinted again, trying to see what she was seeing. “How do you know? What are you seeing?”

But she just stood there, her eyes glazed over, her face alight, her expression reverent. Pari wasn’t the most reverent person I’d ever known. Covered in tattoos, with her long dark hair styled in bold waves, she liked thick black liner and thin black skirts. If I had to describe her in one word, it would be rebellious.

“What?” I asked again. I turned my head this way and that. “What are you seeing?”

“Nothing,” she said, blinking out of her stupor. “Nothing at all.” She scanned the rest of the area. “But I do think I found part of your problem.” She pointed into my bedroom.

“Really?” I hustled to her side, stood there a moment, then walked into my room. Despite my earlier assessment that my bedroom hadn’t been disturbed when the intruder ransacked the place, something seemed to be missing. I rested my hands on my hips and looked around, trying to put my finger on it. My dresser hadn’t been disturbed. My closet seemed okay, considering it was my closet. My bed sat untouched, the Bugs Bunny comforter lying exactly as I’d left it that morning: in total disarray.

But something wasn’t right.

“Reyes. Alexander. Farrow,” I said.

Seconds after I spoke his name, Reyes walked into his bedroom, and I looked across the open space directly from my room into his.

He waited for me to continue.

“I feel like there’s something missing from my bedroom.”

A dimple appeared at the corner of his mouth. “You don’t say.”

“Any idea what that might be?”

He glanced around my room as well, then shrugged. “I can’t imagine.”

“Oh, wait,” I said, stepping from my room into his, “wasn’t there something here? Like, I don’t know, a wall or something?”

He looked up. “You could be right. I do seem to remember a barrier of some kind here.”

“Yep,” I said, stepping closer, “I definitely remember a partition separating our apartments.” When his only response was a mischievous tilt of his full mouth, I asked, “Where did you put my wall?”

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against his doorframe. “What makes you think I took it?”

“It was there this morning.”

“And that means I took it? Maybe you just misplaced it. Where exactly did you see it last?”

I pressed my lips together. “You tore down my wall.”

The smile he wore could’ve charmed the panties off a nun. Completely unrepentant, he admitted, “I tore down your wall.”

I stepped closer and he locked his long arms around my waist. “My apartment isn’t a safe place,” I warned. “It gets broken into a lot, it’s haunted, and it has a terrible aversion to cinnamon schnapps. Long story.”

“And you think taking down this wall was a bad idea?”

“Well, now that there is no barrier here, the curse that has been cast upon my humble abode has now seeped onto your side, too.”

“This is a non-seepage opening.”

“Really? Because it looks pretty seepy.”

“Seepy?”

“Seepy. And now we have this really long bed,” I said, nodding toward our two beds butting up against each other, no headboards in between. Then all the wondrous possibilities took shape in my mind. I beamed at him. “We can play Twister on it!”

“Twister.”

“And we can have massive pillow fights. I will, of course, kick your ass.”

“Will you?”

“Wanna bet on it?”

“I think you’ve done enough betting for a while,” he said, referring to my pathetic attempt to cash in at the poker table.

“That was with a lying, cheating demon. You can hardly blame me for losing to someone who eats souls for dinner.”

“I think your friend is upset.”

I whirled out of his embrace to check on Pari. She was staring again, only instead of the reverence she had when looking at Mr. Wong, she was regarding Reyes with a wariness that, if I wasn’t mistaken, resembled trepidation. She was terrified.

She took a deliberate step back when Reyes looked at her, then another and another until she backed up against Sophie and could go no farther.

“Pari,” I said, inching toward her, “this is Reyes Farrow, my, um, neighbor.” I didn’t know how to introduce him. Was he my boyfriend? Lover hardly seemed appropriate. And he wasn’t my fiancé. Yet. Still, boyfriend just didn’t seem right. “Pari?”

She snapped out of it and began gathering her equipment. “I’ll get to work on this ay-sap.”

Garrett had stepped to the doorway and was inspecting the new construction. It was uncanny. No one would ever have known a wall was ever there. It had been finished and painted to match and simply looked like one long room.

He turned to Pari. “Don’t worry, Farrow scares everyone.”

I scowled at him as I stepped past. “Are you okay?” I asked her, but she didn’t look up at me.

“I’m fine.”

I realized she was panting, but the emotions pouring out of her were only partly fear. There was so much mixed in there, I couldn’t decide which one was causing her the most grief.

I put a hand on her arm. “Pari, hon, sit down.”

She looked up at last, cringed against the light, jammed on her sunglasses, then said, “No, it’s okay. I’m fine.”

I led her to my sofa anyway. “You guys play nice,” I said, my tone warning. Not that it would do any good with those two, but they didn’t always get along. Once we got settled, I spoke softly to Pari. She was not the type to get rattled. I didn’t think she could get rattled. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

She pulled in her lower lip, then leaned over to me and whispered, “What is he?”

She was the second person to ask me that lately. I didn’t know how much to tell her. She knew what I was because she could see me, my light, but what was she seeing with Reyes? “What does he look like to you?”

“He looks like, I don’t know.” She dared a quick look over my shoulder. “Have you ever seen the sky at night when the stars weren’t out but it was crystal clear, the sky such a deep dark black that you were sure you could drown in it, it was so beautiful?”

I nodded knowingly. “Yes, I have.”

“He’s that.” She slammed her eyes shut as though picturing him in her mind, afraid to look again. “He’s the deep, dark kind of beauty that you’d sell your soul to have.”

Wow, she was good. “I can’t argue with you there.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it. Like him. He’s made of fire. A black fire that’s so dark, so intense, instead of giving off light, he absorbs it. Bends it to his will.” She gave me her full attention then. “This is your Reyes,” she said, matter-of-fact.

“This is my Reyes.”

She cleared her throat, swallowed hard, and adjusted her collar. “I can see the appeal.”

“You seemed scared, Pari.”

She nodded. “Oh, I was. I am. Don’t get me wrong, but holy shit, there’s nothing sexier than something that beautiful, that enigmatic, and that deadly all rolled into one. Well,” she added, “as long as he’s not trying to kill me.”

I chuckled. “Can I give you a proper introduction?”

“No!” She started gathering her things again. “I mean, no, thank you. He’s just so— He’s too— I’m just not sure—”

“Gotcha,” I said in understanding, but burning with curiosity on the inside. I wanted to see exactly what she saw.

I looked over my shoulder toward him. He was leaning against his own doorway, and Garrett was leaning against mine. It was a standoff as old as time, when cavemen would challenge each other to a fight to the death with clubs. One of them had to be the alpha, and neither was willing to accede to the other. I squinted at Reyes, concentrated, gave it my all. Nope. He was just the hot guy next door. No starless nights or black fire.

“Oh, your phone is probably most definitely being tapped. Stop by and I’ll give you a clean one. You can use it for anything you don’t want them to hear, but just remember, they can hear you even when you’re not on your phone. Phones are the fastest and cheapest form of surveillance out there. If you need to have a conversation that you don’t want them to hear, you must take the battery out of yours. Don’t just turn it off.

“Call me later,” Pari said to me before tossing a wave to Garrett and hurrying out of my apartment.

“Okay. Don’t be a stranger.”

I realized Reyes was watching me when I stood to show Pari out, but the girl was fast, so I turned my attention back to the problem at hand. The wall thing. Seriously, who did crap like that?

Pinching Garrett’s ribs as I passed, I walked up to Reyes and stood with my arms crossed.

“Yes?” he asked playfully.

“This wall thing is not over.”

He hooked a finger in the top of my jeans and pulled. “We have a wall thing?”

My hands instinctively rose to his chest, the hard expanse smooth under my fingers. “We have a wall thing.”

“Charley!” Cookie called out.

“In here,” I called back, mesmerized by the dimples at either side of Reyes’s mouth.

She rushed in, winded with flushed cheeks. “What do you think of this outfit?” she asked, spinning in a circle until she noticed Garrett. Whom she’d just charged past. “Oh, hi, Garrett.”

“Cookie,” he said with a nod.

She’d been getting ready for the third and final date in Operation Punk Ubie. If this didn’t work tonight, she might have to do something drastic, like—gasp!—ask the man out herself. But she was a knockout. If this didn’t work, he was an idiot who didn’t deserve her.

“I was just getting ready for a date. Thing. Not really a date, but—” She frowned. “Where’s your wall?”

I jammed my fists onto my hips and glared at her. “That’s what I’d like to know, missy. Speaking of which,” I said, turning back to the wall thief, “why on earth would you tear down my wall?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “You live next door.”

“Yes,” I said, acknowledging that tidbit of info, “but why did you tear down my wall?”

He grew serious, studying me from beneath hooded lids. “You live next door.”

“Oh.” His meaning sank in at last.

Cookie sighed. “That’s what I want, damn it.” She pointed to us and questioned Garrett. “Is that asking too much?”

Garrett looked horrified by the thought.

“Okay,” I said, walking to her and straightening her scarf, “I found this guy in an ad in the back of the Weekly Alibi.”

“Wait, you don’t know him?” she asked, appalled.

“No, but he’s an actor. We need an actor for this one. Someone who can, you know, act.”

She groaned. “This could backfire in so many ways,” she said, and she was right, naturally, but I had to see the coffee cup half full. We were doing this for a reason. It would work. And unicorns sparkle in moonlight.